The index page for the 1954 French flap section of this website is here.
Reference for this case: Oct-54-Salies-de-Béarn.
Please cite this reference in any correspondence with me regarding this case.
The two "skeptical" ufologists Gérard Barthel and Jacques Brucker report in their 1979 book "La Grande Peur Martienne", supposed to explain the whole of the 1954 wave in France if not all of the UFO sightings, an observation by a witness living in Salies-de-Béarn, whose story appeared, they say, in the newspaper La République des Pyrénées for October 24, 1954, in these words:
"Mr. Dachary (correspondent of "La République") says:
"-I was in the fields when I heard a loud noise in the air. Looking up, I saw in the sky a strange craft moving at a height that I estimated at about 6000 meters, following an east-west direction. It was a kind of plane fuselage absolutely without wings, with metallic reflections: sort of a big, short cigar, seeming bigger and more massive than a jet plane."
Barthel and Brucker say they conversed with the witness, asking him the size of the object, to which he would have replied:
"First it didn't make a sound... metallic sheen, metallic sheen... yeah, but that doesn't prove it's steel, hey!"
They then asked him: "But, the shape? Was it a cigar?", to which the witness allegedly replied:
"Yeah, a really short cigar, kinda like a rugby ??balloon... but round!! You see, well!"
They then told him that in this case the object would be rather spherical, to which the witness would have replied:
"In the sense I saw it if you will, it must have been one of those balloons they send out to predict the weather! Or something like that!"
They deduce that it was a weather balloon, and they mock "the high scientific 'spheres' which still linger in studying the shape of the observed objects!"
[Ref. bbr1:] GERARD BARTHEL AND JACQUES BRUCKER:
The two authors indicate that they discussed with a witness living in Salies-de-Béarn, of which the newspaper the La République des Pyrénées for October 24, 1954, published the account as:
"Mr. Dachary (correspondent of "La République") says:
"- I was in the fields when I heard a big noise in the air. Looking up, I saw in the sky a strange machine moving at a height which I evaluated as 6000 meters approximately, following an East to West direction. It was a sort of plane's fuselage absolutely without wings, with metallic reflections: to some extent a large cigar, short, seeming larger and with more mass than a jet plane."
The two authors indicate that they asked the witness for the size of his object. They said that he answered:
"First, it did not make a noise... metallic reflections, metallic reflections... yeah, but that does not prove that it is metallic, ha!"
They then ask him: "But, the form? It was a cigar?" and he answers that with:
"Yep, a very short cigar, a little like a rugby balloon... but round!! You see, right!"
They then say that in this case the object would be rather spherical, and the witness answers:
"In the sense that if you want to put it like that, it must have been one of those balloons which they send for weather forecast! Or something of this sort!"
From where it appears to them that the observation was that of a weather balloon, and they scoff at the "high scientific 'spheres' which are still busy in studying the shape of the observed objects!"
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Barthel and Brucker believe that it was a weather balloon, at the suggestion of the witness.
Yet no weather balloon could produce the "loud noise"; which seems to be what made the witness look up.
This remains for me an "unidentified", but poorly documented. It could have been a supersonic jet plane producing a sonic boom. I note that Barthel and Brucker, however great givers of lessons to ufologists who do not share their total skepticism, did not care about important points, such as the date, the time (day or night?), the angular displacement, the duration, the angular size etc. All they did was digging for arguments to "reduce" the observation to that of a weather balloon.
(These keywords are only to help queries and are not implying anything.)
Salies-de-Béarn, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, round, metallic, balloon, noise, silent, high, Dachary
[----] indicates sources that are not yet available to me.
| Version: | Created/Changed by: | Date: | Change Description: |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.1 | Patrick Gross | January 3, 2006 | First published. |
| 1.0 | Patrick Gross | March 1, 2010 | Conversion from HTML to XHTML Strict. First formal version. |
| 1.1 | Patrick Gross | November 2, 2021 | Explanations changed, were "Not looked for yet." Addition of the Summary. |
